Chinese Mission Food restaurant beginning to open for dinner in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, February 25, 2011.
Ran on: 03-06-2011
Mission Chinese Food isn't tops in ambience, but its food is both distinctive and inexpensive.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Chinese Mission Food restaurant beginning to open for dinner in San...

When arriving at Lung Shan restaurant on Mission Street, diners will probably be greeted by a dour woman in a Mao-style jacket carrying two menus: a greasy multifold plastic with more than 150 dishes and a single-page folder with the distinctive red rickshaw graphic with "Mission Chinese Food" across the top.

Diners can order from either, but the majority look no farther than the 23 items on the smaller menu. The names may be familiar - broccoli beef ($10), ma po tofu ($9.50) - but the execution is far different, and more complex, than the surroundings and prices would indicate.

It's strange to have two restaurants sharing one location, and it's an even stranger partnership between an old-line Chinese chef and a young upstart. While the dingy dining room is shared space, the two have separate kitchen setups.

Lung Shan has been owned by Sue and Liang Zhou for nine years. Mission Chinese chef-owner Danny Bowien had never cooked Chinese food until he decided to re-create favorite dishes that he and his chef friends in high-end restaurants loved to eat on nights off.

Bowien, who is Korean but reared in Oklahoma City, adapted to the loose Mission vibe when he moved here nine years ago. He sports partly bleached hair that tumbles below his shoulders, wears goggle-like glasses and spends time helping diners navigate the menu.

Mission Chinese is the poster child for alternative dining scenarios. The relationship between the two restaurants started several years ago when co-owner Anthony Myint opened the pop-up restaurant Mission Street Food a couple of nights a week in the same location. He closed it last year to concentrate on his new project: the more upscale and mainstream Commonwealth, which received a three-star review from me last year.

Bowien took over the space nightly in July, and he's since been cooking for a growing audience, particularly at night, where there's often a wait for one of the 60 utilitarian chairs.

Dining with a conscience

Bowien and Myint's social conscience extends to both philanthropy and buying humanely raised ingredients, including organic produce. The products are pristine, and though the most expensive dish is $12.50, they donate 75 cents from each main course to the San Francisco Food Bank. Since they opened in July, that is more than $25,000.

Pretty good for a restaurant that can kindly be called a dive. The focal point is a huge silk dragon snaking across the ceiling, and swags of clear and pink Christmas lights that swoop over the fake wood paneling wainscoting; half have gone dark, but those that remain add a festive touch to the drab surroundings.

What really lights people up is the food. The 28-year-old chef has a passion and unrelenting curiosity that leads him to not only reproduce but also improve combinations that appear on a standard Chinese menu. On one visit he brought out a bowl of Chinese barbecue sauce, his next project. When the restaurant opened in July, he built a dumpling stand in the front window, but last week he replaced that with a smoker and started to offer Chinese-style brisket and pulled trotters. He doesn't necessarily try to be authentic, but in the end his food comes across as having more purity and integrity than 99 percent of the Chinese restaurants in the city.

Prize-winning chef

After living here for a few years, Bowien moved to New York, where he worked for 18 months at such places as Tribeca Grill. Upon his return to San Francisco he was hired at Bar Crudo, Blowfish Sushi and Bar Tartine. He was opening chef de cuisine at Farina and in 2008 won the Pesto World Championship in Genoa, Italy.

So if he can beat the Italians at their game, who's to say he can't do the same with the Chinese?

From what I've experienced, he does. Not everything works - sometimes his dishes can be heavy-handed in the fat and spice department - but others are so spectacular that they more than make up for any misfires.

Bowien isn't afraid to experiment and use Western techniques to coax more complexity out of the combinations. Ma po tofu ($9.50) is a classic, but he makes a Bolognese-like sauce of Kurobuta pork shoulder before adding tofu and spices. The initial tingle of the peppercorns that first invaded my lips moved down to warm my toes; and while the combination makes a scorching impression, the pork's richness still comes through.

Clearly the chef likes to make people sweat, even on dishes like braised Mongolian beef cheeks ($9), with onions, bean sprouts and whole dried chile pods, backed with the earthier nuances of fresh horseradish. Another surprising jolt characterizes the tingly lamb noodle soup ($9), but instead of an all-consuming heat, it feels like a thousand little pins pricking the mouth. The heat is tamed slightly by the fatty lamb breast, doughy noodles, bok choy and layered broth, which is actually the juice he uses to braise lamb belly. He uses the liquid to cook at least six batches; when it's rich and dark he uses the leftovers for soup.

Blend of cuisines

More nuanced technique emerges on the Westlake rice porridge ($9), kind of a cross between Vietnamese pho and Chinese jook. He salts the chicken and refrigerates it overnight, then cooks the bird in the jasmine rice that serves as the soup base. He uses the meat for Hainam chicken rice ($6), flavored with Shaoxing wine, fried peanuts and cilantro. To finish the porridge, he heats the rice with ginger and herbs and adds oxtail broth, Dungeness crab and a soft-cooked egg. It's a complex and masterful blend that seamlessly melds two cultures.

That same purity is evident in the salt cod fried rice ($10), a dish I want to order on each visit. Bowien makes a confit of escolar and stir-fries it with little rounds of Chinese sausage, scallions, jasmine rice and egg. Another favorite is warm egg custard ($8), with the silken texture of chawan mushi, chicken confit underneath and small coins of sweet Hokkaido scallops on top, shimmering in a winter melon consomme.

Every dish is reworked to bring out maximum flavor. In broccoli beef ($10) he uses the cheeks along with crunchy gai lan, oyster sauce and barely poached oysters. He's found the perfect way to showcase Allan Benton smoked bacon from Tennessee, a product that has developed a cult following. In truth, the pork is so heavily smoked it overpowers just about everything around it. In the case of his thrice-cooked bacon ($9.50) the fatty slices powerfully infuse coins of doughy rice cakes, tofu skins, black beans and half-moons of bitter melon.

Even vegetarian dishes showcase this bold approach, including the vegan delight ($5), with its miso broth smoky with shiitake mushrooms and filled with silken mushroom dumplings. Taiwanese eggplant ($8) consists of fat slices of the vegetable, plus whole leaves of basil and three types of garlic. Again his technique shines: Thick slices are brined, and when it comes time to stir-fry the eggplant, the hot oil doesn't soak in but draws out the salt water. He then dunks the vegetables in boiling water and quickly sautes them with chile oil and garlic, producing a light but assertive dish. It's a technique he says he learned at Farina.

Ignore the decor

His fine-dining roots also show in several noodle rolls, especially the tea-smoked eel ($9) with pulled ham hock and crunchy Chinese celery. He rolls the rice noodle sheet around the ingredients like a burrito and cuts it into sections and presents it on a puddle of burnt wine sauce made with Cognac, brown sugar and soy sauce.

Clearly, Mission Chinese Food wins the award for the best food served in the worst surroundings. There's no ambience, the service can be slipshod at times and the beverage list consists of soft drinks, four beers including Blue Moon ($4) and house red and white wine for $4.

Diners who don't warm to the ambience can call for delivery; in fact about a third of the business comes from takeout, according to Bowien. However, the food, while still very good, loses a little in transport. For the ma po tofu and warm egg custard, which is too delicate for delivery, I don't mind looking at warped and faded Chinese posters.

Prices are based on main courses. When entrees fall between these categories, the prices of appetizers help determine the dollar ratings. Chronicle critics make every attempt to remain anonymous. All meals are paid for by The Chronicle. Star ratings are based on a minimum of three visits. Ratings are updated continually based on at least one revisit.

Michael Bauer is The Chronicle's restaurant critic. E-mail him at mbauer@sfchronicle.com, and go to sfgate.com/food to read his previous reviews. Find his blog daily at insidescoopsf.com, and follow him on Twitter at @michaelbauer1.